Romance Reigns Micro Story Contest

Have a heartwarming love story to share?

During the month of January, send us your 100-word romance story or <20 line poem to choeofpleirnpress@gmail.com.

Eight winners will be chosen to turn into story- or poem-memes, which will be shared every Friday in February on our Facebook wall, so your friends and family can share and appreciate these brilliant stories.

If your story or poem is chosen, we will also add your 100-word third person biography to our website, so that everyone will be able to appreciate your brilliance.

Note that stories or poems submitted for this contest in any month other than January will be disqualified.

2026 Winners

Feel free to share our winning memes across the internet.

Winners' Biographies

Colleen Addison completed a PhD in health information and then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes, and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver Canada where there are ravens, squirrels, skunks, and lots of deer to keep her company. Her work, not always about such natural beings, has been featured in Painted Pebble Lit Mag, River Teeth, and Flash Fiction Friday, among others, and she is a recent winner of Third Wednesday’s George Dila Memorial Fiction contest. She is currently writing a novella, several short stories, and a novel, rather stupidly at the same time. 

Rathin Bhattacharjee from Kolkata is a former Principal and English Teacher, BCSC, Bhutan. He won His Majesty’s Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching (2018). Published extensively, he is a prolific writer. His book “I Love You in the ICU & 20 Other Stories” was nominated for The Legacy of The Literature Prize, 2025. He has been adjudged The Best Fiction Writer several times. An avid reader, he loves writing, translating, critiquing and editing. His personalised Facebook Profile Page link is : https://www.facebook.com/rathin.bhattacharjee.1

Brian C. Billings lives in Texarkana, Arkansas, U.S.A.  He is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana and the editor-in-chief for Aquila Review, the university’s literary journal.  In addition to managing TAMU-T’s drama series, he teaches courses in drama, creative writing, and children’s literature. 

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has sixteen published chapbooks the latest being: fairytale love (Magique Publishing, October 2025). 

Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press) won the Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Broadkill Review, Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications. 

Izzy Lippincott is a semi-retired college professor who unwinds from teaching by driving the backroads of Kansas to take photos. She enjoys writing stories about growing up in Kansas. 

Brigitta Scheib is a teacher that lives in Harrisburg, PA with her husband, daughter and 3 orange cats. Her work can be found at Temple in a City, Flash Phantoms and Choeofpleirn Press. 

Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash (Iron Faerie Publishing), SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.